Many of the proteins, sugars and fats in food are naturally nano-sized. You could say cooking is nano-scale chemistry, as Vic Morris from the Institute of Food Research explains:

'By boiling starch to make custard you are melting small 3D crystalline structures, only tens of nanometres in thickness. How thick the mixture becomes on cooling depends on there-crystallisation of starchy sugars.'

So does the food industry need nanotechnology? Some of world's biggest food producers think so and are investing in research.